Project Greenlight's Dim Future.

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Damon talks about this past season and the future.

By Jeff Otto

For those few people out there who followed Project Greenlight over to Bravo for season three, you know that Matt Damon was often the lone defender of the contest's original intent. While the first two season's had revolved around a more independent vibe, the lack of success for either of the first two features, Stolen Summer and The Battle of Shaker Heights, led to a different objective in season 3: Make a commercial film.

Damon was no great fan of the script the Greenlight group decided upon, a B-movie horror story entitled Feast. After that, he figured the least they could do is go with the most interesting director - but Damon wound up one of the few defenders of the meek but talented John Gulager. Damon won this battle and the film soon went into production, chronicalled through a microscope during the course of the season.

At the press day for Brothers Grimm, IGN asked Damon about his struggles this past season with Greenlight and whether he thought the show was done.

"Even though, by their own admission, the people who voted for that script didn't think it was the best script, it probably was the smartest movie to choose because it does, in an odd way, give the project the greatest chance of surviving, because the movie might actually make money."

Feast is set for release in the unlikely December slot. "Bob's gonna bring it out at Christmas and he was like, [imitating his accent] 'I released this movie The Darkness last year at Christmas. It's the worst movie I've ever seen in my life, this f****** Darkness, but it's a great slot. The Darkness made 22 million. So I'm putting Feast in the Darkness slot.' 'F****** Feast is Citizen Kane compared to The Darkness. (Laughs) So in an odd way, maybe it'll work out."

Besides the difficultly of the project within the show, Greenlight had a tough time convincing viewers to follow the show from HBO to Bravo. "Before, with HBO, because they promo the s*** out of what they run, they do so much great promotion that the show was always a big hit for their size viewership, even though they're not in that many homes, compared to Bravo. I defy anyone in this room to tell me what channel Bravo is."

"The show was really good this year and yet we had horrible, horrible ratings. When we were in conversation with Bravo, they were like, 'Look, the show is good. We got the best reviews of any show on television,' and they said, 'But there's a certain number,' and they showed us the number and I'm not a TV guy, but they said, 'Look, this number, no matter what, we can't bring the show back... This is just terrible, we can't justify keeping it on air.' So it looked like it was dead, but now we got nominated for an Emmy, so it might, if the show won the Emmy, maybe it would be enough juice..."

"It's up in the air right now. I suspect if the movie does well enough, maybe Bob would help with it, maybe there's some way to get them all to do it one more time, but it's on a respirator."